Mariners | Minor-leaguer busts steroids myths

PEORIA, Ariz. — The one thing Mariners minor-leaguer Chris Minaker won't be doing as a professional ballplayer is touting his sport's party line on steroids.

That's the one where Major League Baseball officials publicly — but a lot more vigorously in private — campaign about how their sport isn't as steroid-ridden as, say, professional football and can't be held responsible if younger athletes imitate their players. Their nudge-nudge, wink-wink suggestion is that the sport is socially responsible and simply being victimized by a congressional and media witch-hunt on steroids and other performance boosters.

But these complainers, and there are many, ought to talk to Minaker. The well-spoken, 23-year-old infielder from Lynnwood graduated last June with a master's degree in sociology from Stanford University, achieving a perfect score on an 86-page thesis about the social pressures athletes face to take performance-enhancing drugs.

His paper was strictly about college athletes at Stanford, but some of its conclusions about steroids won't have baseball executives or union officials grinning with glee.

"If the need for steroids is broken down by sport, it becomes clear that baseball has the biggest problem with steroids," Minaker writes, citing results of a confidential, written survey he took of 91 male varsity athletes at Stanford. "It is also baseball that has had the most well-publicized steroid problem of all of the professional team sports. It seems that the problem of the professional ranks has trickled down into the collegiate ranks."

That's pretty tough stuff, especially later on when Minaker concludes that college sports are rampant with supplement usage, both legal and illegal, and that it's only a matter of time before the same thing occurs in the high-school ranks.

Not the kind of thing baseball likes hearing, especially from one of its own.

Minaker found that baseball was the sport at his school where supplements — everything from steroids to caffeine — were either used or that players thought they needed to take them to get ahead. He didn't set out to point a finger at his chosen profession. In many ways, he still hasn't.

His sample size is admittedly small. Nine of 89 athletes who answered the survey question on steroids said they felt the need to take them (though none admitted to actually taking them) — five of those being baseball players. He also points out, in an appendix to the research, that the Stanford football team was largely uncooperative with the survey and "remains shrouded in secrecy" about its supplement usage.

But this is still groundbreaking work, done by an "insider" and hardly the type of endeavor typically pursued by active players. Minaker says he was merely intrigued why so many of his fellow athletes took nutritional supplements, including protein powder, amino acids, creatine and potentially steroids, without really knowing what they were putting into their bodies.

"I looked at the social pressure to use and the perceived effectiveness of the supplements," Minaker said. "People were most likely to use supplements when told to by two or more of the strongest influences in their life."

Teammates exerted the strongest external pressure by far, he said, followed by coaches. A coach, he writes, "can attempt to use his power to pressure his players into using supplements that he thinks will improve their performance, even if this is against the will of the player." Minaker found that the pressure athletes felt to use supplements, both from within and from external forces, was so great that they'd take products they had no proof even worked.

Protein and creatine were high on the list of popular supplements taken by the athletes Minaker surveyed.

"Overall, about 42 percent of the athletes surveyed had used a creatine supplement in hopes of enhancing their performance," he writes.

Some athletes consume massive amounts of protein shakes, he adds, even though research shows "a mixed diet" can provide the sufficient amount needed.

"In this study, it seems that every athlete is or has been on something," Minaker writes. "The supplement culture has become completely intertwined with the culture of collegiate sports, just as it had before with professional sports. There has been a trickle-down effect from professional sports right on down to the ranks of all athletic levels."

The last thing Major League Baseball wants is a minor-leaguer writing that college-level players are, at best, being influenced by their perceptions about big-leaguers or, at worst, copying them. After all, the argument that big-league steroids are morally corrupting youth is the biggest one cited by those crying for a government crackdown.

Minaker hit .315 with four homers and 17 runs batted in over 40 games with Class A Wisconsin last season. The 10th-round pick by Seattle hopes for a long baseball career, but has deferred a $10,000 scholarship just in case he wants more schooling down the road.

Regardless of what happens with his career, he said, he'd like to pursue his work on this topic.

"I think there is a need for that in our culture," he said. "So, definitely, I'd like to look at this further."

Geoff Baker: 206-464-8286 or gbaker@seattletimes.com.

Read his daily blog at www.seattletimes.com/Mariners